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The Departed (English)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson

THIS IS a film you hug yourself in joy as you watch. Martin Scorsese with Francis Ford Coppola and Brian De Palma, were part of the Seventies Roman Catholic brat pack who made these incredibly influential films that changed the way we looked at the movies.

After Goodfellas and Casino, there followed for Scorsese a time when he seemed to go into an over reverential mode making movies that the Academy might like.

With his latest, Departed, Scorsese has returned to making his kind of film and fans can only cheer for joy as the master returns to form in this violent, pulpy, blood soaked gangster epic.

A faithful reimaging of the Hong Kong hit, Infernal Affairs, Scorsese has his stamp all over the film. This is an adrenalin drenched, testosterone fuelled excursion into the murky world of cops and crooks.

There are two moles on either side of the law whose job it is smoke the other out. The cast is uniformly A-list. Matt Damon is creepily bland as the crooked cop while DiCaprio is brilliant as the undercover cop exquisitely capturing the vulnerability and the terror of having to be "a different guy everyday."

Mark Wahlberg's turn as surly cop ensures he steals every scene he is in. There should be an Academy Award nomination for this. There is a calmly confident Martin Sheen as the cop who heads the mole operation and Alec Baldwin as the charismatic chief of police. Vera Farmiga as the shrink both the doppelgangers are involved with is also competent.

The one person who was expected to wipe the floor with the competition, Jack Nicholson, just did not work. His gang lord, Frank Costello, does not come out as the pure distillation of evil, he is rather laughable and in the final count proved to be the weakest link.

The film has all the trademark Scorsese elements, from the luscious cinematography which echoes the themes of shadow play and mirror images to the crisp editing, to mean guys talking tough and the very Catholic themes of sin, guilt and redemption.

The violence is defiantly unremitting and the language would definitely make a sailor blush. The climax with its hysterically high body count, might feel like parody, but all is forgiven when you soak in this excellent slice of Boston life from one of cinema's most intuitive cultural historians.

Mini Anthikad-Chhibber

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